Breeding Jacksonii

[Sepioteuthis]

This is the first time for me that I'm trying to breed chameleons that don't live together (my breeding experience is currently limited to pygmies and melleri).
Twice now, one week apart, I have introduced my 2 female jacksonii xanths separately to my male.
The females, Mara and Jade, were clearly not interested, they turned black and gaped. The male, Oscar, on the other hand seems to be very ready, willing and able. He jerks his head back and forth and slowly tries to approach the female.

Now I know that matings don't always work right away, but I'm wondering about a few things.
1. Are the girls maybe too young? they are about 10 months old now and weigh about 40 grams.
2. Is a weekly mating attempt too stressful for the girls? Female Jade stayed black the whole rest of the day after both times that I showed her to Oscar.
3. Are their environmental factors that could affect the females' receptivity?

My last question is a little more general, not just about jacksonii:
Has anyone ever had a male chameleon that seemed to be undesirable to the females?

Thanks, Suzanne

 

[Ryan Jarosek]

Hello, I have a similar situation that may help confuse things for you. I just thought the info might be useful or helpful in the fact I am sharing some of the same frustrations.

I have three females and have recently put them together one at a time. Two wanted nothing to do with my male and one was very receptive.

It could be an age problem as one of the unreceptive ones is just about 10 months old and did not want anything to do with him. The second unreceptive girl had given birth 4 months before. The receptive female is about 1.5 years old and was ready to go the third time i tried. Almost like she had to meet him a few times. That may sound strange but each time she would let him get closer. Then the successful mating was two weeks later.

As far as a male that is undesirable. My male could not get the time of day until he was about twice as big as when I got him. As a smaller guy the ladies did not like him.

 

[Sepioteuthis]

I appreciate you sharing your frustrations, Ryan! If nothing else, it's good to know I'm not alone
How much time did you leave between introductions for the receptive female?
How big / heavy is your male Jacksonii? Mine weighs 60 gr.
Did you put the females in with the male or vice versa?

 

[Ryan Jarosek]

I appreciate you sharing your frustrations, Ryan! If nothing else, it's good to know I'm not alone
How much time did you leave between introductions for the receptive female?
How big / heavy is your male Jacksonii? Mine weighs 60 gr.
Did you put the females in with the male or vice versa?

It is good to know you are not alone.

I gave them about three days or so in between intros. The girls would open their mouths, and go dark shake back and forth. When one showed receptive I introduced the female to the males cage and left them together for about two days until she was letting him know she had enough. I witnessed the act about three times. My male is about 55-60g and the females are all in the 40's. The male was more than ready to go at about 40 grams but no one wanted anything to do with him.

 

[Brad Ramsey]

Do you think it's possible that the introductions were the trigger that brought her into receptive condition?
My thought is that once a female becomes aware that a male is around, her standing defensive behavior may instinctually subside and she may become receptive to mating.
In a natural environment a male might hang out in the perimeter of her territory for several days.
This is all speculation and I don't keep Jackson's but thought I would offer my ideas anyway
I would continue to introduce the male.

-Brad

 

[SoCaliSon]

Do you think it's possible that the introductions were the trigger that brought her into receptive condition?
My thought is that once a female becomes aware that a male is around, her standing defensive behavior may instinctually subside and she may become receptive to mating.
In a natural environment a male might hang out in the perimeter of her territory for several days.
This is all speculation and I don't keep Jackson's but thought I would offer my ideas anyway
I would continue to introduce the male.

-Brad

I like this. I believe I have witnessed this in my Veileds. They will be extremely unreceptive, and then a few days later seem have a hormone surge. Just a what I seemed to notice, and never really thought to much about until you mentioned it Brad.

 

[Sepioteuthis]

Do you think it's possible that the introductions were the trigger that brought her into receptive condition?
My thought is that once a female becomes aware that a male is around, her standing defensive behavior may instinctually subside and she may become receptive to mating.
In a natural environment a male might hang out in the perimeter of her territory for several days.
This is all speculation and I don't keep Jackson's but thought I would offer my ideas anyway
I would continue to introduce the male.

-Brad

You know, that thought had crossed my mind before, but for some reason it didn't hang around. lol It sounds very plausible, though.
Maybe I try showing them the male from a distance every other day or so to one of the female and not to the other. Then I can test if being aware of the male's presence has an influence on the female's behavior during the weekly 'dates'. Hmm....

 

[reyesjoshuacruz]

what was your intro technique? who was moved into the other enclosure? and to what part of the enclosure relative to the one that wasnt moved?

anyone know what times of day might be ideal?

in my experiences there is a diff reaction for diff reasons of being non receptive.

a female that was no receptive due to young age or being gravid would become aggressive at the first sign of the male.

while females that were non receptive due to what i believe was the male being unsatisfactory were not aggressive right away, esp if the male was introduced into the females cage, esp if it was introduced towards the bottom of the cage.

these females repeatedly rejected younger males, but accepted my eldest.

also just for experiment, i tried a few tests. they would show no signs of aggression towards the male and would allow additional matings, but would become aggressive to the other males ( of course i would not have allowed them to mate with diff males, just wanted to test if i could say fairly certainly that the later reaction was a female that saw the male as unsatisfactory )

has anyone else witnessed this at all?


i saw what i thought was an instant reject to all three males, from a young female.
later she was slow to reject the younger, and accepted the older.

females that i was having problems with, that were of age, and not gravid. i would transfer them into the largest enclosure, and keep a small line of sight area from a few feet away to the males cage. Also keeping the females enclosure higher than the males.

but these are all veileds

 

[Sepioteuthis]

what was your intro technique? who was moved into the other enclosure? and to what part of the enclosure relative to the one that wasnt moved?

I tried both - female to the male's enclosure and vice verse. The females would start to turn dark right away, but didn't go black and start gaping until the male started courtship displays (which was very quickly, even when still sitting on my hand).
When putting one cham in the other's cage I put the introduced cham lower and at least 1ft away from the cage owner.

The difference in rejection behavior that you mentioned is very interesting, though in my case the male's age shouldn't be an issue because he's 4 years old.

 

[reyesjoshuacruz]

also imho when the females rejected the males for being unsatisfactory. they were not so defensive.

they would turn darker and push the male down and away. like they were shoveling them male off.

not remain stationary, gape, hiss, and ram

on the other hand gaping, hissing, ramming was all displayed while being too young or gravid


if they were unsatisfactory the females were rejecting the males maybe because of their age, but who knows. if you think about it, you male may be old enough, but something else may be unsatisfactory. who knows with these little ones right?

 

[Eric Adrignola]

Mara - Jade? Nerd Alert! I shouldn't be talking, I recognized it...

Works with deremensis - no way to get the males interested without having them live near or with the females and introduce another male (or a mirror. other males work better though). The females would get receptive only after being wiht the males for a while, it seemed.

 

[reyesjoshuacruz]

scratch that, re read what eric was saying.

so has no one else noticed a different rejection behavior for different rejection reasons?

 

[Sepioteuthis]

Mara - Jade? Nerd Alert! I shouldn't be talking, I recognized it...

Yep, I admit, I'm a nerd. And proud of it

@ Ryan - the females actually didn't attack the male, they didn't even sway back and forth alot. They would just gape at him and run away when he got too close.

 

[Ryan Jarosek]

Mara - Jade? Nerd Alert! I shouldn't be talking, I recognized it...

Works with deremensis - no way to get the males interested without having them live near or with the females and introduce another male (or a mirror. other males work better though). The females would get receptive only after being wiht the males for a while, it seemed.

OK now I noticed and feel like a nerd now.

As for the second part , that would be consistent with what I see in my xanths.

I remove a barrier between the two cages so the female can see the male for awhile before I introduce them. Just something I started doing . I have no idea if that helps or not. I figured if they could see each other in the area it would help. I have read the same about dwarf Jacksons and just kind of did it that way.

 

[Ryan Jarosek]

scratch that, re read what eric was saying.

so has no one else noticed a different rejection behavior for different rejection reasons?

I have noticed , I have a female that only rejects when he is close and one I suspect could be gravid already that if she even gets a glimps of him she does the dance and anythign she can do to stop him. She will grab his horns and throw him down.

 

[Trace]

I haven't worked with any Jackson's species in a long while so I'm not sure if seasons (changes/increases to humidity, rain, temperatures etc.) play so much into their breeding cycle, but my bitaeniatus are not interested in mating just yet. It's slightly too soon in the year for it. February is usually when I seriously start pairing things up and start seeing copulation.

Good luck Suzanne! Keep up the introductions, it'll happen at some point.

Cheers,
t

 

[Sepioteuthis]

Well, I've removed the visual barrier between Oscar and Jade on Monday. The first day Jade spent the whole day hiding behind a branch, but as of yesterday afternoon she's walking around more. She's still pretty dark, though.

To be continued...

 

[Sepioteuthis]

Bow chicka bow wow!

Jade allowed Oscar to mount her! He seems to be having some difficulty completing the next part of the task, but Jade seems to be very patient with The 4 Year Old Virgin. Sorry, no pictures, they are too far in the foliage and I don't want make Oscar even more nervous.

I thought this was interesting: This time when I put Jade in Oscar's cage she started to head bob as soon as she saw him. She also turned black with light green cheek stripes and dorsal triangles.
Is it normal for female jacksonii to head bob during courtship?

Update: Well, they are done mating for now. No idea if the mating was successful.
Anyway, thanks to everyone for their input. Allowing them to see each other really did the trick!

 

[Sepioteuthis]

I left Oscar and Jade together overnight and this morning they were mating again. This time it actually looked they managed to get their vents lined up properly.

I'm so excited about this!

 

[Eric Adrignola]

Friend of mine who kept jacksonii a long time ago had better luck with them mating when housed together. He also had better luck keeping them healthy and free from fighting when they were NOT kept together. MY conclusion? Keep them together, but in a big big cage - but that's not practical for most people.

Or, keep them separate, but with only a semi-visual barrier. In other words, they can see each other if they want to, but if they don't want to, they can hide from view of one another. Screen cages, up against each other, with a barrier on one half.

I had great luck getting my deremensis group to mate when kept in a free-roam type setup with partial visual barriers. They woudl stay apart during some times of theyear, closer during others, and when mating, they'd be really close. The neat thing was that they always slept close together. And, they never stayed as far apart as they COULD have. The enclosure was 10' long, and the females were never more than 3-4 feet from the male(s).